


Orbits

by kateandbarrel



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Introspection, No Dialogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 16:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1905834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kateandbarrel/pseuds/kateandbarrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Jane meet. Eventually, feelings happen.</p>
<p>(Takes place in some kind of nebulous time period post-Dark World and pre-Winter Soldier.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orbits

**Author's Note:**

> For a [gameofcards](http://gameofcards.livejournal.com) writing challenge. We specified a fandom & set of characters, and got a randomized character pairing back which we then had to write a fic about. I got Steve/Jane. :)

When Jane first met Steve Rogers, certified superhero, it was a little intimidating. Even after being with Thor, travelling through the Bifrost, and experiencing other worlds, seeing _Captain America_ in person - fully decked out in the whole patriotic outfit and practically feeling the freedom emanating off of him - was intense. Their paths crossed only briefly, and they’d exchanged few little words after being introduced: him with a respectful _Dr Foster, it’s nice to meet you_ , her with more of a stumbling _You too, Captain America. Cap? Or should I call you Mr Rogers? That just sounds wrong..._. 

Later, when Jane recounted the story to Darcy, her intern just laughed at her.

When they next met, it was in Jane’s lab at SHIELD headquarters, and they were in the middle of _a situation._ Which was a boon when it came to Jane’s social skills: she didn’t have to bother with niceties. She communicated concisely and efficiently and Steve respected that. They worked well together, actually. (Which was good, because Jane had ended up becoming SHIELD’s on-call astrophysicist after that whole thing with Erik having a slight break with reality.) 

Jane finally settled on just calling him _Steve_ , and he reciprocated with _Jane_.

Steve always asked her how Thor was doing when he saw her. They were friends, she knew, and once Steve even came over to her apartment to hang out with Thor. Jane had sat on a chair and thought about how weird her life had become, with the two larger-than-life men playing Super Smash Bros in her living room. She always told Steve that Thor was doing great, up until the moment he was called back to Asgard to deal with his brother, because of course Loki was still alive and causing more trouble. _Of course._

After that, Steve just started asking how Jane was doing.

The more they worked together, the more Jane realized she knew next to nothing about Steve Rogers. She tended to just let details of her life spill forth from her mouth unhindered - she couldn’t help it, she was a sharer - and it felt one-sided. Pointed questions didn’t get her very far, though, so eventually she goaded him into a night of drinking, in which she intended to get him talking so she could get to know him better. It wasn’t until Jane had matched Steve shot-for-shot with most of a bottle of the corner 7-11’s finest mid-shelf rum and she was blitzed out of her brain that Steve revealed he couldn’t get drunk. Jane knew she couldn’t be annoyed, because her plan was kind of sneaky in the first place. But she made him sit down and watch a biopic on Stephen Hawking as retribution anyway. 

She fell asleep halfway through, her head on Steve’s shoulder, drooling only slightly.

For New Year’s Eve, Jane ended up being Steve’s plus one to Tony Stark’s over-the-top celebration. (Fireworks in the shape of Iron Man’s mask? Really?) Steve didn’t want to go alone - Natasha would try to set him up with someone, or at the very least tease him mercilessly about his romantic situation - and Jane had no plans other than work. Steve figured she spent better than 80% of her waking time at work, so he thought she could use a day off. It turned out, neither of them were great at parties, so they sat off by themselves for most of it, eating the fancy hors d'oeuvres off the trays that waiters waved by their faces, and making better small talk with each other than with any random person that stopped by to say hello. At the end of the night, Jane told him she’d had a great time, and gave him a kiss on the cheek in thanks.

When he went to bed that night, Steve’s cheek still burned from the kiss.

Steve had learned the easiest way to get attention off himself with Jane was to ask her some science-related question. Then she was bound to go off on at least a fifteen-minute tangent about a related topic. Early on in their relationship he’d done it just to ease any awkward silences that may have arose between them. But now he just liked to hear the passion in her voice. She especially loved wormholes - whenever she got on the topic, her cheeks would pink and she couldn’t help but smile.

Sometimes Steve didn’t understand at all how Thor could leave Jane behind.

Jane noticed Steve spending more and more time in her lab whenever he stopped by SHIELD headquarters in between missions. She didn’t think much of it at first - they’d become friends, and were spending a lot of time together outside of work. (Or as much free time as one overworked astrophysicist and one superhero-slash-SHIELD agent could cobble together.) Steve tried to teach her to shoot a gun, but she didn’t take too well to that. Jane taught him how to use emoticons in his text messages, and he took to that much better. Steve would send her nightly texts, even if they were brief - a simple _goodnight :)_ \- and it wasn’t until he missed one that Jane realized how much she looked forward to them. 

Jane tried to think about Thor that night, but Steve’s face kept popping up in her mind’s eye instead. 

Steve and Jane both felt a little guilty, like they were betraying someone. For Steve it was the spectre of a lost love who’d moved on and grown old. For Jane it was a god who would always have planet full of people who were, necessarily, more important to him than her. The old adage of _moving on is hard to do_ seemed now to be more about the guilt of having done the moving on, rather than the attempt. 

Jane told Darcy how she felt, and Darcy said it was stupid. Jane was glad to have Darcy in her life, sometimes.

Steve and Jane’s emotions had started playing off each other’s, bouncing and rebounding between the two possibly-more-than-friends, becoming like heavenly objects in one another’s orbit, as it often happens with two people who are very close. As time passed, Jane’s darker mood lifted, and so did Steve’s. Jane tried to explain it in words to Steve, and in the process she mentioned the shortness of life, but all that did was distract her as she suddenly wondered what Steve’s life span was. (It distressed her that Steve himself had no clue as to the answer.) But Steve knew what she was trying to say, and he agreed. 

People told him he was a superhero every time he stepped out his front door, but he didn’t feel that way. He felt flawed; human.

He knew Jane felt the same, even if she didn’t verbalize it. He felt it in their first kiss - her hesitation, the chasteness of closed lips, contrasted with her grip on his neck that communicated a need to never let go. He felt it in their second kiss, only a moment later, when Jane threw herself into it, with all the passion she normally reserved for talking about space travel. Steve welcomed the feeling of a long-dormant need as he pulled Jane to his body, and they fell into each other.

Neither of them thought about old loves that night.


End file.
